This is right, which is why it’s not endorsed by the Free Software Foundation as a free OS. However, you don’t really have a choice, since your hardware only works with proprietary drivers. Many Linux distributions choose to add proprietary bits in order to support more hardware.
We cannot be sure, since some bugs/backdoors are very hard to spot. However, FLOSS definitely helps here by being verifiable.
To be honest, it definitely happens sometimes. But it should be more rare.
Hopefully future development of Qubes OS helps here.
@fsflover Can I simply install it with the default settings for now and later on change the settings to Advanced whenever needed? Or this cannot be done once installed?
The Advanced Features in your first picture can only be done at time of installation. However, you can always reinstall the OS in the future, and choose Advanced options.
In the second picture, if you find out you need proprietary drivers in the future, you should be able to install them manually if they’re available for Linux. Chances are, the Ubuntu installation, by way of the Linux kernel, will contain “generic” or reverse-engineered open-source drivers that cover all the bases. Not always, but usually.
Success!!! I went ahead and simply used the Default options as @fsflover suggested. I do not think I will need the Advanced Features to create digital art. But if I am mistaken, please do let me know obviously.
And I did have this Intuition that I would have to re-install the whole OS again to enable the Advanced Features later on, which is exactly what @amarok responded.
I have already installed Krita, Gimp and Inkscape…SUCCESS at last!!!
Thank YOU for your Help! I learned this process and I didn’t have to hire anyone for this kind of Assistance.
I am glad to see that you have exceeded what I thought would be possible on Microsoft hardware.
I experimented with PureOS on a Windows laptop early-on and decided that in most cases, that exercise defeats the purpose. If you can get everything to work, you end up with an ‘un-PureOS’ more-so than a ‘PureOS’. Linux will allow almost anything. But if you have to use proprietary drivers and insecure settings to get everything to work, then perhaps Ubuntu might have been a better choice to begin with.
Anyone here tell me if I got this wrong. If you get PureOS installed on Purism hardware, then everything just works. In most cases, you can’t get a fully secure OS by putting PureOS on hardware that was intended to run Windows. If that is the case, then Ubuntu or Debian is the better choice. This is not a bad statement about PureOS. It’s more like trying to install Ford parts in to a Chevy.
I used to run Wine to get all of my Windows programs to run under Linux. But then I learned that it’s actually just easier to use two PCs, one Windows and one Linux. I use them for different things, depending on the nature of the task.
I would also advice you to create a document with step-by-step instructions how to install Linux, options, configurations, terminal commands, drivers, packages etc. Over the years I have used my own instructions several times and updated them, when hardware or distro changes.
I am installing Brave Browser and it is indeed compatible with Linux (I would imagine with Ubuntu as well, since it is such a common Linux option). But when I click download, this shows up. And this message does not make sense to me since I had installed Brave in Windows 10 in this same computer, and it installed successfully and I could use it normally.
So my hardware was not an issue before, why would it be an issue now?
I had a look at that page and it appears to be simply instructions for installing on Linux. And your hardware qualifies according to their requirements.
You would simply copy and paste each of those commands, one at a time, into the terminal, hit enter, and wait for each one to complete. You’ll have to enter your password when using sudo (=superuser do, i.e. admin privileges). It elevates your user privileges for a short duration after providing your password.
Keep in mind that downloading packages from the internet instead of from the Ubuntu software app can be risky, even from a trusted source, as a malicious actor could try and poison companies’ download files. (I believe this installation will verify its own package signature automatically during download, though.)
P.S. A note about using copy and paste inside the terminal… You can use the menu’s copy and paste, or keyboard commands. The keyboard combinations are slightly different from other programs. Instead of Control+c, it’s Control+Shift+c, or +v, or +a, as needed.
On Linux, you also have a different way of copy-pasting strings, which I really love. You just highlight the text in one place and do a middle-click in another place. It works without any menus or key combinations and is instant.
This is a very good idea. Typically when I try to get something new to work, I hack, hack, hack, for hours at a time. Then eventually all of a sudden, it works. Even immediately after such a hacking session that ends in success, I often say to myself “now what exactly did I just do?”. Who knows? By then it’s done and even I am often not sure which steps were necessary and what made it actually work. I usually can’t even retrace my steps. What I did two hours ago from a web-page that has been long closed is lost history. So documenting everything you do as you go might be the key.
I just realized that my Surface Pro Laptop stopped being touchscreen after I installed Ubuntu. It was definitely touchscreen with Windows 10. And that was actually one of my questions that I just found out the answer to. I thought the hardware was mainly what determined whether a computer is touchscreen or not.
Is there any way to recover this touchscreen function while still having Ubuntu?
Perhaps by installing linux-image-surface. Therefore please follow the recommended route under Debian / Ubuntu chapter, starting with: “First you need to import the keys we use to sign packages.”
But still, by leaving exclusively UEFI based hardware aside, there is relatively easy way to install PureOS on non-Librem hardware. Please take a look at this PureOS thread: “Your disk has a GPT partition table, for a Linux system to be able to install a bootloader you need to have a “BIOS boot” partition.” This important tip/answer was provided from @mladen, meaning that partition 1 needs to be created as ‘BIOS boot partition’ (ef02), on top of the following ones. In addition, using +32768 number will provide more space (instead of +16384) on/for it.
As for losing some features when you load Linux on to hardware that was intended for Windows, that is typical. You can usually hack the issue to get everything to work.
To avoid having to hack issues that come-up when loading Linux on a Windows PC or Laptop, I usually use a lazy method. If you wait until a few years after the given hardware has been in the market, and then install the latest Linux version on to your slightly older Windows hardware, often everything just works. Someone else will have worked out all of the bugs already and you will benefit from their work. If you have the latest proprietary hardware at any given time, you might have to write the drivers yourself, or use Wine to hack some Windows drivers (and maybe even a few Windows DLLs) in to your Linux OS. Sometimes there are existing Linux drivers that you might be able to tweak to make them work on your latest Windows hardware. Sometimes nothing works and you have to just hope that some day, an OS upgrade might restore the lost features.
Thank You Very Much for answering, all of you! I simply got sidetracked with a job interview I just had and school work. So I was able to answer until now. I will definitely try these commands to see if my touchscreen function is restored. There are other functions in Ubuntu that don’t work as with Windows and are quite unpractical and irritating. But I will search and ask about them at a later time.
=> For now, it would help me immensely if any of you knows of drawing tablets supported in Ubuntu that you know of or, even better, have used yourself (preferably not made in China). I have searched everywhere and all of them are Mac or Windows supported only. Someone said in a forum I found online that Wacom is Linux supported, but it does not say this on the company website.
Also, I know Purism themselves have the plans and intention of launching a tablet but I don’t know how useful it will be for creating digital art. And they told me they cannot disclose, or even know, when that tablet will launch. Plus, I don’t know if it will be Ubuntu compatible.
Ok, I am finally digging into touchscreen (now I have the time)!
Here is a picture of my xinput --list, but I am not certain what is the name of my surface pro. Is it Virtual core XTEST keyboard? These are the only options that show up.
